Robert Erases Willem @ my SoHo Loft.
  January 2023

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 Hello Michele, (public)

 Attached to this email is a rectangular planer presentation receivable by a similar

computer device that was employed to devise. Visually it is doormat and simultaneously,

an oration, for good or ill/ true or false; certainly ambiguous which remains the legacy of

Abstract Expressionism and specifically Willem de Kooning.

 

 It was tooled by razor blade while Matisse told you the sweet-tooth aches for armchair.

Archaic references not necessarily comprehensible to the young artiste, practicing, enhancing dance steps for the

TikTok app, that might make them a successful Influencer, moneyed businesses would wish to co-join.

 

 I am very familiar with Michele's experience of having a labored painting be inappropriately exhibited and

subsequently reevaluated as energy transference fuel (the positivity of destruction). And that is what this digital painting

pretty much does/ is about. Does the damn thing still have a pulse?

 In actuality, most people delete my incursions at first sight/ block my email, and for a rare few, take time to ridicule and excoriate.

I share your antipathy for known anarchists.

 

 A young audacious artist, Robert Rauchenberg came upon the Idea that he would ring the doorbell of The Great Artist, Willem de Kooning and ask Willem to supply a drawing the up and coming artist(e) could destroy. de Kooning thought it was a great idea AND they did it! 70 years later it is still great lore; an Event, Historic (at least to me). AND worth making art-ache about. AND, exxxcuse me, High-Art. Whew, that is not a term anymore bandied about; as it is the zenith of pretension. Said Robert Browning (about The Pre-Raphaelites) "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

 ANYONE can make a painting, Kitsch is always on demand, why should we distinguish Party A's endeavor from Party B?

One for all and all for one. OR "Fuck You Too". In some circles this is considered "the crisis of painting" but I read the newspaper and know you have better things to worry about.

 The arbiters of "Art" decide "what is and what isn't", and you the powerless can bellyache all you want and explain

your grievance to a wall. Power doesn't give an inch, and why should it? I hail the entrepreneurial class being a fellow American, last I checked.

 

  Middle Level Art Institutions took it on the chin during The Pandemic (and still). I had long associated with one in particular.

Said an even "Older-Timer" than myself, "{UnNamed, has and always will be, An Artistic Backwater}". I was Shocked! -having stood on my hands for decades trying to paint Naked People. Seemed so ordinary, matter-of-fact, then; Now I have to follow Toulouse Latrec to the whorehouse to avoid arrest. Good you can Remember Painting when I cannot.

 

 A Mirror held to Nature, or so they said... AND if the mirror has self-consciousness, best give it its own reflection. We are all running around with mirrors, even if we live in an iPhone or R an iPhone or know someone who is an iPhone.

 

 I like to think of {the thing I am discussing} as a projection thrown by Action Jackson, BUT before it took form on the oozing substrate it crystalized into recognizable (albeit indecipherable) images. Is it truly FLAT? -The Truth of Paint, so help me G_d! Seems to be doing a quasi-wavering... Best kiss the monitor to decide What's Up.

 

 Long ago I hung with an artist who willed only to add a link to the chain of The Canon. (That's the JOB, pal...!) And when he passed another pitcher appeared and said, "What am I Cream (cottage?) Cheese?" He was and he is. And I couldn't talk him out of it, or anyone else. If you happen to be an Artist's Artist try to find a more reputable ilk to associate with; one a little less self-serving, a bit broader in scope, a little bit braver. Or go find that desert Island where you won't be happy there either.

 

 I hang with The Big Boys now, they are all dead but it really isn't a problem. Like anyone else they need a re-Tweet now and again and since I paint with dead artists and not green, blue or red, it works out very well. Actually got a memo from WdK thanking me for resurrecting that drawing he foolishly gave to Robert Rauschenberg.

 

 I do remember that summer in That Loft; twas when I gave up on Ab-Ex and went straight. Took me a while to figure out how to draw again. I do believe that Mythic SoHo is gone now; like the repeat weak shadow in L.A. reference: DADA, The Stuff of Dreams.

Rauschenberg went on to do other things; did not brick-lay the same stones the same way for a lifetime. Most noted for combining images on The Wall with Sculpture on The Floor. (He apparently also painted nudes with light...) Also, by lore, was able to contract a Los Angeles Gallerist who could sell the same painting twice simultaneously, defying the laws of Physics.

 

 Cell Phone People come to this Opening with Opinion; they need neither Fact or Painting.

 

 de Kooning is the father of The Slipping Glimpser. He reigns over a principality named Ambiguity. I am a disciple.

I have a tomb there. I do not know if Hands on the Right (Stage Left) are nixing Cell Phone Creatures or playing Chopstcks.

-something about Gravy, he said...

 I know you know about The Audience; but wouldn't you think that turning a proper doorknob could get you over The Rainbow

into the Boneyard?

 

 Not all murkiness remains unresolved. ART did very well to leap from 57th Street & Madison to POP.

When Warhol, Rosenquist, Jasper, Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenberg, George Segal et.al. hired the same PR Team

that sold The Mercury 7 Astronauts it was genius and history. I am afeared we have drifted back to a 57th @ Madison of the mind.

 Also, of similar Pop Flavor, it is now clear; He is not Purple, only the people he eats. AND, the bikini, by contemporary standards, was not itsy bitsy, only the polka dots were small. I must be stuck where Andy seared The Steer/ killed The Cow.

 

 I also need to inform: Although my original website did indeed half disintegrate, my current DOT NET is not actually only 3 images.

A book is not its cover. Necessary to read the inside flap and turn some pages.

 

 Why do I write these things. Maybe because they are about One-Ups and every one is The Last until it is not or it is.